


In Due Time

by chappedlipsfingertips



Category: The Handmaid's Tale (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-04-22 23:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19138972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chappedlipsfingertips/pseuds/chappedlipsfingertips
Summary: **Updated description, since the work is turning out a bit differently than I thought it would.**The reconciliation of Nick's promotion in Season 3, told through a series of flashbacks and flash forwards. Nick/June, with hints of Nick/Beth, and the origins of Mayday._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________"He wanted to scream at them, he wanted to tell them what really happened, because he couldn’t bring himself to believe that they were proud of him for what he’d done.But he knew it deep down, that they were."





	1. Night

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 3.1 "Night."

 

_Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. 1 Peter 5:6_

 

* * *

 

They got word that the house was burning before fire crews even showed up. 

A guardian walked in to the room where Nick was being questioned by Commander Hansen, and try as he might, Nick couldn’t even begin to read his face. For as serious as he looked, he almost looks amused.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, Commander,” the guardian said. The Commander waved at him to skip the formalities. It was something Nick had come to appreciate about Edward. He’d been a lower-level commander prior to the bombing that killed his Handmaid. There were openings because of the slain commanders and the swiftness with which Commander Hansen helped lead the investigation ended in a promotion and a spot as the head investigator in high-profile cases. Nick hadn’t been surprised to find out he was in charge of finding Holly.

“The Waterford mansion is on fire,” the guardian said, and Nick felt his pulse quicken. The guardian looked to him. “Everyone is fine. We’ve let Commander Waterford know. There’s crews on the scene.” The guardian paused and Nick watched his eyebrow lift a bit, as if just the thought brought him some pleasure. Fred was liked by just about no one. “From the sounds of it, the Waterfords will be living in their garage. Everything else is gone.”

Nick let out a sigh as Hansen waved the guardian off. The timing was pretty damn good. Hansen had done his homework. Nick had spurted out the answers to the story he and Fred had rehearsed on the way over just fine. So fine that Hansen started asking about other things. June’s disappearance earlier that year. Her using the Mackenzie’s home to give birth. His temporary arrest with the Guardians. Eden. Things Nick hadn’t rehearsed in a while.

The door clicked shut behind the guardian and Nick watched as Hansen set down his papers he’d been holding. 

“Your bedroom is above the garage, right?”

Nick nodded. “Yes, sir.” 

“It’s unscathed.”

Nick nodded again, adding another “Yes sir.” He tried to follow Hansen’s line of thought.

“We’d be able to go through all of your things to look for evidence,” Hansen told him as if Nick hadn’t thought of this yet. As if he’d been the arsonist and this had been a wrench in the plan. 

“Yes sir,” Nick said with resolution. His room was no longer a place to hide anything. The last evidence that had hidden there was long gone to Canada.

Hansen nodded with this, seemingly convinced that Nick was actually innocent, for pretty much the first time since he’d been in Gilead. Nick watched as he thumbed through the file, surprisingly thick for Nick being just a lowly driver.

“You have a lot of recommendations from people in here. Commander Pryce seemed very fond of you,” Hansen said, turning over a paper as Nick recognized Pryce’s all-caps handwriting.“It’s peculiar that a driver’s Commander would try to promote him if he’s good at the job, but Waterford did.” Hansen narrowed his eyes and shook his head, while Nick focused on trying not to crack a smile at the man’s obvious judgement of Fred.

“Fred doesn’t know this yet, but he’s getting demoted,” Hansen said with a hushed tone, and Nick grasped the arms of his chair to prepare for what must have been coming next as Hansen leaned forward towards him. Not that this wasn’t great news, but in Gilead, there was always a catch.

“That means no Handmaid, and certainly no need for an experienced driver.”

Nick could have sworn he was digging holes into the wooden chair arms at this point. His mind started to race — June at a new posting? How would he keep in touch with her?

“I’ve been trying to decide what we’re going to do with you. We all have for a while. We knew this was coming eventually.”

Nick was barely listening to a word he said. What if the night before was going to be the last time he saw her?

“I think someone of your caliber and faithfulness is worth more than just a new posting.” Hansen paused, and laced his fingers together in front of him. “We’re promoting you.” 

Nick watched him, just barely comprehending what had been said, expecting that maybe this meant he’d be driving for Pryce’s replacement or something more intensive than just a posting at a home. 

Hansen smiled at him before opening his notepad to a new page, and holding his pen just above the paper, ready to write.

“Commander Blaine, is there any information you have that might be useful to us as we prepare the official demotion memo for Waterford?”

 

* * *

 

His Uncle Jim had been a cop for pretty much forever. Long before Nick was born, or even Josh for that matter, Uncle Jim had graduated from the academy and started what would be a long career in the Detroit police force.

When Nick was about ten, which made Josh fourteen and just a little too cool for it, Uncle Jim would pick him up after school and take him around town in the cruiser while his parents were still at work.

Jim had been taking Josh out for a few years every Wednesday, but Nick had been sitting at the kitchen table, eating a peanut butter and jelly he made himself the day Josh turned their uncle down. 

“Nah,” Josh said, closing the refrigerator door. “I got plans with friends. Gotta leave here soon.” 

Nick watched Jim look Josh up and down. 

“What kind of friends?”

 Josh rolled his eyes as he popped open a soda can. 

“They good kids?” Uncle Jim asked. Nick hadn’t thought much about the question then, but looking back, he knew Jim had seen a lot in Detroit. He knew about the rampant drug use that Josh would eventually die from. 

“Yeah, she’s a good kid,” Josh said with a sly smile.

Nick watched Uncle Jim carefully. In the Blaine household, no girls were allowed over if their parents weren’t home. Nick had been privy to enough heated discussions between Josh and their father in particular to know it was steadfast.

“Her parents home?” Jim asked, his eyes narrowing a bit.

“I think so, yeah,” Josh said, glancing at Nick ever so slightly, but enough that Nick knew he was supposed to stay silent about the rules.

Nick watched their uncle stare at his brother for a moment before reaching for his wallet. Nick couldn’t see what Jim pulled out of it, but he did see his brother’s eyes widen a bit at it.

“I want you to be safe with her,” Jim said in a voice that Nick didn’t recognize out of him.

Josh still didn’t reach for what was in Jim’s hand.

“We don’t —“ Josh started, and Nick could feel his interest really get piqued with how Josh’s face reddened.

“Just take it. Give me some peace of mind,” Jim said, holding his hand out farther.

Josh reluctantly took the item as Nick tried to parse out what it was. He caught a glimpse of black plastic, but was disappointed when he didn’t know what it was. 

Years later, Nick would open a package of condoms for the first time with a curious friend after covertly buying them at a drug store and realize what Jim had handed Josh.

After Josh retreated from the house embarrassed, Uncle Jim turned to Nick.

“You wanna come along?” 

Nick left the sandwich behind as he followed, though food was usually one of his top priorities.

“I’m not promising you’ll see anything good,” Uncle Jim started as they walked towards the car. Nick kept his eyes on the way the light was shining off the vehicle. His parents drove beat up old cars that were rusting and chipping with paint. The cruiser was the equivalent of a limo. 

“In fact, you might see some things that aren’t good. But I think it’s important for you to see them.”

Uncle Jim had stopped walking, so Nick did the same and turned to look at him.

He nodded his head at his uncle. 

Jim opened the passenger’s door to the cruiser for Nick. The leather on the inside shined in the sunlight. There were no crumbs, no specks of dust, that Nick could see. 

“You won’t have any fun if you just stand there all day,” Uncle Jim told him, and Nick scrambled to get in the car, though as gingerly as he could considering how nice it was.

Jim got in the car unceremoniously in comparison, slapping his seat belt and turning to look at Nick who was focused on the dashboard.

“You don’t get carsick, right?”

Nick shook his head fervently.

“Good.” Jim put the car into reverse to back out of the driveway. “Your brother ralphed all over my last car during a chase once a couple years ago. Thought I was gonna kill him.”

Nick thought of the way Jim’s dashboard sparkled in the sunshine the day they announced the troops had taken over Detroit. Jim went down with a fight, that was for sure.

 

* * *

 

It’d only been a few hours since the fire. The house was destroyed, and though he was expecting to see it like that, it still shocked him when they finally got there. He and Fred had come back to fetch Serena, but she refused. Said she was staying with her parents. That she couldn’t handle living anywhere else for the time being.

Nick stared at the ground while Fred waited for Serena to tell him he was coming along. 

“We can go back to the office to aid the investigation,” Nick finally suggested. 

Rita stepped in to help Serena, and to spare himself from how awkward it was going to be to watch the Waterfords part, Nick excused himself. He went to his room above the garage to get the photo of him and Josh at the lake, knowing he wasn’t going to come back. He didn’t need any of the rest of it. He saw the van before she did, pulling up around the front of what used to be the house. He felt his heart catch in his throat.

June was sitting on the sidewalk this whole time, staring at the road. At least she’d been given a blanket. 

He wanted to say everything to her as she stood up, and he tried to not look at Fred at the end of the sidewalk, watching her from behind.

He wanted to tell her sorry for blowing up the night before. He wanted to tell her he didn’t know where Holly was still. He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked in the hazy air. He wanted to tell her that he was getting promoted to Commander and that he’d work his hardest to get them out together. That it would maybe be easier now. He wanted to tell her that he loved her. But the van was waiting and the guardian who was assigned to make sure she got in had a strong grip on his gun. So she started walking away from him before he could fully comprehend it.

“Hey,” he finally said, afraid that as he passed her, that this would be it. That she would be assigned to another household and he’d only see her in passing at the Red Center for a drowning or something.

He felt his voice shake. He never got to say a true goodbye to his folks. He wasn’t good at this.

“Take care,” he finally said, staring at her eyes and trying to forget how prickly and hot his were feeling. He wanted to memorize the blue. Her blue. Holly’s blue.

“You too,” she said.

 _I love you_.

 _I love you, too_.

 

* * *

 

Nick’s high school graduation was the next day. He wasn’t particularly excited to walk across the stage, but every time she started to think about it, his mother would cry and so he was primarily doing it for her. He had picked up the gown and hat he wasn’t fond of and was in the process of ironing his shirt for the ceremony.

His father had ironed his clothes before Nick got started on his own outfit. Dressing up was rare for the Blaine family, but graduations were an exception.

In fact, the last time Nick had worn a tie before his prom a few weeks earlier was undoubtedly Josh’s graduation four years prior.

His mother came into the living room, where Nick was struggling to get wrinkles out of his shirt on the wobbly ironing board that was older than him. She had her trademark worried-but-not-trying-to-give-it-away face. Nick knew it by the stiff smile and the way she knitted her brows.

“Have you seen Joshua?” she asked Nick’s father, who was now shining his shoes in the corner.

“No,” his father replied carefully, keeping his attention on the shoes.

Nick looked up from his shirt, setting the iron on its rest to keep it from burning the fabric.

“I thought he was supposed to be home at four,” Nick said, glancing over at the clock. He’d lost track of the time.

“He was, sweetie,” his mother said, grasping at the apron she was wearing to cook dinner.

Nick’s father only grunted in response.

“Do you think?” Nick started, his voice annoyingly shaky. For as much as he didn’t necessarily want to walk at graduation, he didn’t want Josh to miss it.

“No, no,” his mother started, putting on a more genuine smile.

 _Oh God, she’s really trying to sell it._ He felt a knot form impressively quickly in his stomach.

“I’m sure he’s fine. Maybe he got caught up at work.”

Nick’s father grunted again. He watched as his mother glared at him.

“Robert,” she chided, her voice sounding more shrill than usual.

“That boy is never _caught up_ at work,” Nick’s dad said with exasperation. “It’s never happened. It never will. Even on his best days, that boy is not a hard worker by any stretch.”

Nick bit his lip. His father was physically deteriorating from the hard hours he had put in at his jobs. It wasn’t a secret that the next time the auto plant had to layoff anyone, that his dad was first on the chopping block, no matter how early he showed up to his shifts.

He watched his mother who nodded somberly. She wasn’t going to get into it with his dad the night before his graduation. They’d do it later — maybe in a couple days — as they always did because the stress of Josh was tough on their marriage.

Later, after dinner, Josh stumbled into the living room while Nick and his dad were watching the Tigers game on the television, and his mother was upstairs setting her hair in curlers.

The door slammed into the wall, and Josh barely stayed on his feet for the few steps until the couch, where he unceremoniously leaned on it.

Nick got up quickly from the couch, anticipating Josh to fall to the floor, which was typical of his brother when he came home like this.

His hands were on Josh’s heavy shoulders before their father felt like chipping in.

“Where the fuck have you been?”

Nick bit the inside of his cheek as he shouldered the majority of his older brother’s body weight and helped drop him unceremoniously on the couch.

“Out,” Josh said with unreasonable emphasis.

Nick looked at Josh’s overly dilated pupils and decided grabbing a trash can was probably the best next course of action. That, and it would take him out of the room for a moment, though the sound of the conversation always traveled through their thin walls.

“Out where?” Their father asked, as Nick moved past the stairwell. He could see his mother’s shadow blocking out the light from the upstairs hallway. She heard the door slam. Hell, the neighbors down the street probably did.

Nick looked up to her and nodded, though he could barely muster the movement.

“Doesn’t matter,” Josh said, his stupor setting in. Nick pulled out the trash can from the bathroom downstairs, and drummed his fingers on it, trying to suppress everything he wanted to say.

“Nick’s graduation is tomorrow. You couldn’t wait until after to get your fix?”

Nick felt his stomach drop. He couldn’t move.

“Dad,” Josh started, his voice full of the same remorse it always was when he got caught. “It was just one.”

“No, it clearly wasn’t.”

Nick looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, horrified to see that tears were running down his face.

“I’m going to be fine tomorrow,” Josh said, though the way his voice was shaking made the statement unconvincing.

“No, you’re not,” their father said. Nick could hear the steps creak as his mother started to come down. He gripped the edge of the sink, bracing himself for the teary confrontation she would have with Josh.

To his shock, he felt his mother’s arms around him, his tears now completely uncontrollable.

“You’re so goddamned selfish,” Nick could hear his father say as he and his mother stood in the dark hallway bathroom crying together.

“You’re going to die like this,” Nick’s father said, his voice clearly thick with emotion. “You’re going to destroy all of us. You’re so fucking selfish.”

 

* * *

 

When he saw her in the backseat of the car, he had to remind himself that she wasn’t Josh. That he wasn’t enabling her. He wasn’t enabling her, right? 

He was trembling as he followed her into the house, her gaze strong and unapologetic. He didn’t know where she’d been. He hadn’t had time to follow up with anyone. She was supposed to be with the baby in Canada by now, or at least pretty fucking close.

Where was the baby?

It was the only thing he can think about as he stood and listened outside of the parlor door.

“Did you give my baby to Ofjoseph?” He heard Serena ask, and his brain suddenly stopped picturing Holly dead in a ditch somewhere. He hadn’t even connected the two. He had no hand in any of it, which was both freeing and terrifying.

He overheard June talking about Hannah. About losing her.

Didn’t June know that he was going to get her out? That he was more than willing to die so that his daughter could get to know her older sister?

He couldn’t stop himself once he was told to take her to her room. His brain was on autopilot. He was saying everything he ever wanted to say to Joshua, particularly the last time he saw him alive. He was missing teeth. His face was sunken. He was going to die. He did, only a few months later.

He didn’t want that for her, but here he was, saying it because he knew it was inevitable and he wanted to throw up at the thought of her hanging on a wall somewhere.

“Don’t you think I fucking know that?”

The words nearly knocked the wind out of him.

Josh never would have admitted that he knew he was dying. Teeth falling out, he still had the fake optimism, claiming he could stop whenever he wanted to. That hurt, in its own way. But not like this.

His body was vibrating with how hard he was shaking. They stood there for what felt like eternity, him watching her back as she stared at the message she carved on the wall.

“I want more for you,” he finally told her. She turned to him slowly, as he felt his chin tremble.

“I’ve always wanted more for you.”

June nodded.

“I couldn’t leave her.”

“I would have gotten her out.”

He watched her poorly suppress an eye roll.

“And I’m sure Moira and Luke are doing everything they can in Canada, but she’s still here.”

He felt his stomach drop. She was right. He watched her wipe a stray tear.

“ _She_ is more important than me. Getting her out is all I want.”

He understood.

Waterford’s voice was summoning him, and so Nick nodded at her, hoping that it said everything he wanted to say to her still.

He hoped they had more time together. There was no way they had more time together.

 

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> References/Spoilers for the entire show up to 3.6 "Household."

_“All this time you spent together and he never mentioned anything?”_

 

* * *

  

He should have known it wasn’t a good sign that he was only assigned to temporary housing. In the few days since his reassignment, he’d been boarded up in a house with a few other men who’d been promoted recently. Nick couldn’t remember the last time he saw so many commanders.

He tried to think nothing of it.

When he first joined the sons of Jacob, before Fred and Serena and all of the other commanders started squatting in homes of people who’d fled because they had enough money to, Nick stayed in an apartment with a couple other young drivers on the edge of Boston.

It was kinda remarkable — staying somewhere that was never at risk for having the lights turned off. His roommates had been nice enough, but no one really talked much. The sense of unease that he’d grown accustomed to was just starting to set in back then. They talked a little bit about the food they were rationed, the weather, but nothing about their personal lives. Looking back, they were all practically mafia recruits, learning a little more each day.

His roommates now were reserved as well, but there was no fear to it. No attempt to break the silence, other than sharing that each of them had been drivers. Nick decided to not disclose he’d been at the Waterfords, knowing full well that anyone with even a modicum of power knew the scandals surrounding the household.

The apartment was barely furnished, a couple of Commander Lawrence’s books on an otherwise empty bookshelf, a single couch despite the fact that more people were living there than could fit on it at once, a tiny kitchen table with two chairs, three bedrooms with two dorm-style beds in each, a bathroom with just a clear shower curtain, just enough lightbulbs to be able to see at night.

He had no connections. No one to tell him that June was okay. No Marthas in the network to let him know that Holly made it. No one to tell him if Rita had been convicted, or if she was still in fresh hell with the Waterfords. 

He laid in bed every night, staring at the ceiling, only falling asleep once the worrying wore him out hours later.

It was just like when he used to lay in bed and worry about his parents in the beginning.

 

* * *

 

Other than the picture of Joshua, Nick had carefully erased the rest of his life before Gilead from his thoughts. Josh was easier to think about — he was already a past-tense before the takeover. Nick had gotten the phone call from his mother a few weeks after he’d joined the Sons of Jacob.

Waterford let him go to comfort his mother in particular.

“The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty,” Fred had quoted, when Nick accidentally slipped that Joshua’s cause of death was an overdose.

“I can give you three days,” Fred conceded, which Nick had found suspiciously generous.

Four days after Nick got back, the attacks happened.

Before his mom dropped him off at the airport to go back to Boston, she said his name shakily before revealing why she’d been fidgeting on the drive there.

“I’ve been looking into that Serena Joy Waterford,” she said, wringing her hands together. “There’s something weird going on with her. The whole movement.” Nick felt his stomach clench when his mother’s eyes watered. “You don’t have to go back. We can figure something else out.”

Nick wanted to, deep down. But he knew better.

“Mom, what’s here for me? I think I’ve worked every job that would ever want to hire me, and we know how that went.” He paused, trying to figure out how to reason with her. “I can send you money and take care of you and Dad this way. It’ll be okay. I’m just driving them around.”

He watched his mother stare at the ground and nod before pulling him into a tight hug where she inhaled as if she were memorizing the smell of his hair and clothes.

“I hope you’re right, sweetheart,” she told him, pulling away. She rubbed his arms before dropping her own. “You’re going to be late for your plane. I love you.”

He didn’t say I love you back, for fear that he would start to cry and not be able to get on the plane back to Boston. Instead, he looked her deep in the eyes and gave her a quick nod.

It was the last time he saw her.

 

* * *

  

Beth came out to him in the back hallways the first time he went to Jezebel’s with Fred. He’d been standing there, staring at the wall, somehow managing to enjoy it because it was a moment without Fred, when she came out to him with a knowing smile on her face.

It’d been a while since Nick saw someone smile so outright. Rita only did in quick passing moments, with the side of her face that wasn’t turned towards the Waterfords.

“You want some food?” She asked, once he turned to her. “I’m the cook around here.” She paused, and glanced back at the door she came from. “Not the best restaurant I’ve worked in, but it’ll do.” She looked him up and down carefully, but not in a way that made him nervous. 

“Skirt steak, but it’s tender,” she told him, and then started to turn away.

He was following her before he knew what he was doing.

The physicality with Beth grew quickly, maybe fueled by his stomach, maybe fueled by the fact that he’d been deprived of intimacy since the start of things a year prior, maybe because she was spunky and he’d always been attracted to that.

Her room was only a few steps away from the kitchen, and it didn’t take long before he started to notice that the underskirt of her bed frame always hung differently, or that when he was eating in the kitchen that people would come to the doorway for her and stop when they saw him, coming up with a lame excuse to leave without having any sort of conversation.

He knew the resistance existed, he’d wanted to find it ever since the day in Washington, DC.

He didn’t expect to find it hiding under the bed he’d spend time laying in while Fred stole time away with enslaved prostitutes while Offred was pregnant and therefore unable to participate in monthly intercourse.

He tried to work up the courage to ask Beth about it — she was coy, and never shared more information than absolutely necessary. He still didn’t know much about her previous life, save for the hint of New York accent that still hadn’t dissipated.

It was seemingly out of the blue as they rolled out of her small bed one night after a few months, in the same hour they always did — roughly thirty minutes before Fred always came downstairs. 

“Do you speak French?” she asked, her back to him as she pulled her dress on over her head.

Nick’s eyebrow raised as he stepped back into his underwear.

“Are you coming onto me?” he countered, assuming it was the start of one of Beth’s jokes.

“The girls here,” she said, turning towards him, and for the first time, staring directly into his eyes instead of up and down his exposed torso. “They need help.”

Nick paused what he was doing. Was she testing him? Did she notice that he had been taking mental notes of everything?

“Help me help _them_ ,” she said. “M’aidez.”

He felt his eyes widen involuntarily. He’d heard that before, in briefings.

“Mayday?” he asked, almost incredulously.

“It’s French,” she said. “I studied it in high school. It’s how you say ‘help me’.”

The passivity with which she spoke about something that had been stumping the Eyes for so long almost sent a chill down his body. That, and the fact that since she started talking, Nick had been unable to keep getting dressed.

Finally, after what he swore was an eternity, he gathered the ability to speak.

“You’re Mayday?”

She picked up his shirt on the floor and handed it to him.

“Get dressed,” she told him with pursed lips that concealed a grin. “Fred’ll be waiting on you soon.”

 

* * *

  

He hadn’t seen Commander Lawrence in a while. His memory of everything after DC had gone hazy, but he knew he’d been to the man’s house shortly after returning to Boston, once the new regime had settled in. The only thing Nick recalled from that first visit was that the number of books in Lawrence’s office had struck him — unlike Fred, the man who owned them was an intellectual.

Something about that felt threatening to Nick. Fred was easy to be around — he was so interested in his own authority that manipulation was simple. Hell, spying on him as an Eye was laughably easy, to the point that even Commander Pryce was amazed at the information Nick so easily amassed on Fred. Fred was trusting, although his trust came in his position. But an intellect? Nick watched his own movements carefully when he was around Lawrence in a way that he never did otherwise.

Lawrence had changed rapidly over the years, his hair graying and his cheeks sinking at a rate unparalleled by anyone else in power. Eleanor’s presence dwindled, too. The woman who had greeted everyone when meetings happened at their home slowly retreated over time, into someone who made brief appearances every once in a while, looking disheveled.

The only thing that really stayed the same was the books.

When he watched June grab for one, he stopped paying attention to the conversation despite the fact that the bombshell had been dropped on him that he was going to Chicago just a few minutes before she walked in. Had she heard? The way she was looking at him when she first stepped into the room — the complete shock — made him think she hadn’t.

He was going to have to tell her. He didn’t want to think of that now.

He contemplated, as she took the book carefully — so carefully — to Lawrence, of what she must have been before. She’d been a book editor, but hadn’t talked in too much detail about it to him. He saw snippets of it at the Boston Globe offices, the way she had methodically collected newspaper articles, desperately trying to piece together how the Gilead regime had started — hoping to find information that would take them down.

He couldn’t have told her everything he knew. Not then.

 

* * *

  

When he got back to Gilead, Fred immediately sent him to police training. Nick couldn’t shake the final conversation with his mother as he learned how to rapidly fire a gun, and was sprayed with pepper spray while having to defend himself with physical combat. It reminded him of the conversations he’d had with his friend Steve who went to Marine boot camp.

There was no way the training was just for protecting Fred and Serena.

He considered leaving. It wasn’t too late to jump ship, right? 

But even when Nick held a gun, there were so many guardians just waiting for someone to do something rash, staring at the thousands of trainees carefully while holding their own loaded AK’s. 

They’d be ripped apart by dogs, they were told. Shown a couple videos of it, too.

Nick gave up the thoughts pretty quickly. Instead, he kept his head down and learned as much as he could. Self-defense could come in handy at some point, he figured. He was able to ignore the true meaning behind the commands to shoot anyone disobeying orders, but realized that there were probably some guys who’d do it just to avoid their own deaths.

He sabotaged himself, in a way, by working so diligently in training. At the end of the few weeks, he and a few hundred others were separated and brought into a room.

Forty minutes after being given maps of the Capitol Building, they were on private planes to the district.

There were only twenty-four hours spent between when they landed in a private airfield in Maryland and when they went into Congress, guns loaded. The plans had been discussed, and Nick felt his stomach drop when he realized there were hundreds of men headed to the Pentagon just over the Virginia border, to the Navy Yard in Southeast DC, to the Marine Barracks, to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland where they kept Air Force One, to the White House, to the Supreme Court office buildings, to the Capitol Police headquarters, to all the nearby police precincts. It was scheduled during rush hour to make sure emergency vehicles would be hindered. The plan was of such magnitude, so many targets in the nation’s capital that even if absolutely every single one of the Gilead guys were killed in the process, the country would have had a hard time building themselves back up.

Still, Nick had never wanted something to fail so badly in his life.

That night, camped in a hangar, he laid awake and thought of his mother. If he died trying to stop them — and he wouldn’t do anything but take a couple people down, he knew it that — then no one would be able to protect her. His parents were sitting ducks, blinded by the grief of Joshua. Nick couldn’t die and destroy them like that.

And with what he’d overheard while driving, though he’d never imagined it would actually come true, someone had to make sure his mother was okay.

So he ran in with everyone else, the fight response in him only overpowering the flight by a hair. He aimed his gun at people he’d recognized from being on the news, and he pulled the trigger while only focusing on the way it felt when his finger pressed against the metal. Not the way the bodies tore open, the way the blood sprayed, the way the screaming was so loud he wouldn’t have been able to think straight had he been tuned into his senses.

And then, it was over. As soon as he realized it was, he started violently vomiting as he attempted to stumble out of the Congressional Chambers, stepping over mangled bodies and sometimes having to grip onto furniture to keep from slipping on the blood that pooled on the marbled floor. Though, from the sounds and smells that overwhelmed him until he got out of the building, he hadn’t been the only one sickened by what he’d done.

It was the only thing that managed to serve any sort of comfort afterwards.

 

* * *

  

When Beth opened the door to Commander Lawrence’s house, Nick felt himself freeze. He hadn’t seen her earlier. What was she doing here? He glanced behind her to make sure he was in the right place, and not back at Jezebel’s.

Beth, equally surprised by the way her eyes widened, looked at him carefully. He felt her watch the way his jaw slackened, uncommon for him. 

“You’re not here for me,” she surmised, with a bit of a smile. 

She opened the door, and he followed her.

“June’s upstairs, the first room in the hallway after you turn left,” Beth offered, before heading past the staircase. Nick felt himself stare up the dimly lit foyer, felt his stomach drop with what he knew was coming, and instead followed Beth into the kitchen.

“Cold feet?” she finally asked him, after he stood in the doorway of her turf for a few moments. She was catching up on dishes, the sink still full of the glassware the Commanders all used in the meeting earlier. 

He always liked the way Beth worked. She had the fastest moving hands he’d ever seen, particularly when she would chop with her knives that she perhaps loves more than anything on this earth — she admitted that once to him — but she was so meticulous, everything turning out so perfectly.

The glassware that had already been rinsed shined as if it was brand new.

“How did you get here?” he asked, unable to focus much on anything else. 

Beth didn’t stop washing, but instead turned the sink water flow down a bit so they could have a hushed conversation.

“The Commander wanted a better cook. I think he fired the other Martha that was here with Cora. I got pulled from Jezebel’s.”

“Really?” he asked, almost unable to believe the explanation even though he knew she was telling the truth. He stepped closer to her in the kitchen. 

“You know I would never get a say in any of this,” she said, turning her head so she could smile at him wistfully.

He took a deep breath, trying to process what this meant for everything.

“Luckily,” she started, after watching him stand silently for a moment, “I had a lot of girls working with me there. It’s just a bit of a challenge trying to get in contact with them, now. But they’re gonna be okay without me.” 

Beth eyed his uniform.

“So, a promotion,” she said. “Could make things a bit easier on our end.”

Nick felt his face fall. 

“A transfer?” she asked. Her intuition terrified him sometimes.

He nodded.

“Chicago. The front,” he managed.

“It makes sense,” Beth said, as she rinsed the last glass under the water. She shut the faucet off. “With your previous service.”

“She doesn’t know about that,” he told her, quickly.

He watched the gears turn in her head a bit.

“So you’re here to tell her, about the transfer at least,” she finally surmised while drying her hands on a dishtowel, as he stood and stared at her, trying to picture her back in the Jezebel’s kitchen, though it was hard. It’d only been a few weeks since they’d last seen each other there — Fred never strayed for long — but with the change of scenery, it felt like it’d been years.

Nick nodded.

“She seems tough,” Beth told him, matching his eyes.

“What’s Lawrence like?” Nick asked her, desperately wanting to know what odds both she and June were up against now that he wouldn’t be able to help. 

Beth exhaled. “Hard to read,” she said. “But Cora and June, they mentioned something about Emily, the last handmaid. Lawrence put her in the van that June was supposed to get into.” 

“The escape van?”

“Yeah,” Beth said. 

They stared at each other for a long moment. Cora had been a contact of theirs for a while, but neither of them had ever known that Lawrence could be a potential ally.

“We’ll be okay here,” Beth told him. “I’ll figure out how to get in touch with you.” She cracked a sly smile, and for a moment, it felt like old times.

Nick smiled a bit too, with a single nod. If anyone would find him, it would be Beth.

Beth broke the distance between them with two light steps. She looked up at him, and Nick expected her to be emotional, but her gaze didn’t waver.

“I’d tell you I’d pray for you, if I believed that sort of thing,” she said. “If you believed that sort of thing, too.” 

He bit his lip, but managed to turn the corners of his mouth up. Their long conversations at the kitchen, in her bedroom, had finally turned into their lack of belief. It had been comforting to know that not everyone believed in the God he’d lost faith in. The way she talked to him, he knew it was comforting for her, too.

Beth opened her arms and wrapped herself around him, fitting into him in a way that felt nostalgic, but familial rather than romantic. He hugged her back, concentrating hard on keeping up his usual stoicism. He didn’t want to be already crying when he went to June.

Beth pulled back, and smiled at him, though her eyes were a touch more watery than usual.

“You’ll be okay, too,” she told him. “I’ll see you soon, tiger.”

 

* * *

  

“I want to move a person,” he told her, before he even sat down on the stools he normally would perch on when seeing her was a common occurrence.

Beth looked around the kitchen, with wide eyes, hoping that he had done a visual sweep to make sure no one was listening. Once she seemed satisfied, she turned to him with a furrowed brow.

“I don’t move people.” she said pointedly, but hushed.

He knew it. They’d started by smuggling birth control and pregnancy tests for the girls at Jezebels and letters to the resistance members in DC. Their black market operations had gotten pretty big, and at least they were preventing any of the girls in the brothels from the hell that pregnancy brought in Gilead. Then once that was underway, there was the alcohol, the illicit drugs — the things that helped take the edge off, helped the girls in Jezebel’s drug their suitors to help spy on their phones, in their wallets.

They’d built it together. Beth, the coordinator, Nick pretty much just a helping set of hands when he could be. That, and he was someone with the resources to determine who was truly trustworthy to Mayday.

But it wasn’t enough. Black market birth control or roofies weren’t going to fix this.

“She’s pregnant,” he told her.

He felt Beth stare through him as she folded her arms. It was almost terrifying how much she knew him. She always claimed it was the way his jaw muscles jumped, but Beth was almost dangerously intuitive. It’s why Mayday was as successful as it was, but she was always too humble to admit that.

“The handmaid?” She asked, almost incredulously. 

“It’s mine,” he told her, and then swallowed hard, realizing what that meant for the two of them.

He watched the gears turn in Beth’s brain, how the realization softened the muscles in her face.

“Nick,” she started, but he couldn’t bear the rejection.

“I can’t let her be here,” he told her, almost embarrassed by how his voice cracked. He could feel his eyes sting, and he watched as Beth saw his strong exterior start to crumble.

She took a few deep breaths, her brow etching itself back into her forehead.

“We haven’t moved people before, Nick.”

He shuddered a sigh, blinking back the tears as he nodded his head. 

“We could try. There are so many contacts. We’ve got to be able to make it work,” he nearly pleaded.

Beth tilted her head for a bit, clear that she was entertaining the idea. Nick felt his stomach twist in anticipation. 

Then he watched her narrow her eyes.

“What happens when they kill her?” Beth asked him. “What happens if there’s an accident or whoever is helping her gets killed and she’s abandoned somewhere we we can’t find her?”

Nick failed to stifle the sob that escaped his lips.

He pictured the first Offred, four months pregnant, tying the strips of her sheets to the ceiling light. Later, Nick discovered it’d been the doctor who got her pregnant, a quick quip from Serena when she told him to impregnate June, when he’d raised an eyebrow about her claims of Fred’s infertility.

“Beth, I cant cut her down from another makeshift noose.”

The tears were running down his face freely, and he watched Beth’s eyes glisten. She’d known about the first girl, she’d been the one to comfort him afterwards.

Beth reached up and cupped his chin, wiping away his tears with her thumbs in a way that reminded him of his mother.

“I can’t make any promises,” she started, looking at him carefully. “But I’ll look into it.”

She pulled her hand away from his cheek.

“Go splash cold water on your face. We don’t want Fred to think anything.”

 

* * *

 

“Holly got out,” June told him, while their bodies were intertwined.

He felt his heart nearly jump out of his chest. He’d been unable to get confirmation. 

“I found out while I was at the Red Center between the postings.” 

Her tears were already running freely as he turned to look at her. He could feel his eyes stinging in response. 

“She got to Canada,” June repeated, her voice wavering.

“Lawrence knew?” Nick asked.

He watched June’s face alter a bit. Surprise, maybe? 

“Beth told me,” Nick said. June stayed quiet, waiting for him to explain. He took a deep breath, trying to find the words. 

“She used to work at Jezebel’s. In the kitchen.”

June’s face morphed as the realization hit her.

“The letters?”

Nick paused, recalling the letters that had made their way to June, that he had given to Luke. Her husband. Their legs were still entangled, he could feel the dampness leftover from earlier transfer onto his thigh as she pressed against him. 

He swallowed hard, pushing those thoughts away.

“Mayday,” he told her. “Beth is the head of Mayday.” He paused. “I’ve been helping her. Since before I met you.”

She watched him carefully, and he rubbed her arms.

“You’re going to be okay,” he told her.

He watched her bite her lip, her eyes filling with tears again.

“I don’t need to be,” she said, and he felt his stomach drop. Panicked, he searched her face, though it was serene, save for the tears starting to collect in the corners of her lids. 

“Emily is going to find Moira. Holly will be okay. I just want to make sure Hannah gets out. That she’s okay, too.” 

“I’ll be doing what I can,” he choked out. He knew it wouldn’t be much.

“I saw her that night. Lawrence took me to her house.” She wiped at her face. “She’s so perfect, Nick. Everything I imagined and more.”

“We’re going to get her out,” he reassured her. “Beth is so fuckin’ smart, June. So resourceful. She orchestrated you at the Boston Globe. We tried.” He could feel tears running down his face. “We tried so goddamn hard. I’m so sorry we didn’t get you out. We did everything we could. It wasn’t our fault that the pilot didn’t follow orders. We tried.” 

June watched him, nodding. He took a deep breath to control the wavering in his stomach. It wasn’t time for him to be apologizing. He had to make sure she was going to be okay while he was gone, perhaps forever.

“She’s an asset to you,” he told her. “Watch out for Lawrence. He might not be who he seems just yet.” He felt his stomach pull, knowing that he still had things to tell her one day, too.

He held her hands in his and kissed them over and over, afraid it would be the last time.

“Please be careful,” she begged him. 

“I’ll find a way to you,” he promised her, feeling himself almost believe it.

“I love you,” she told him, as he brought his face back up to hers. He kissed her as if he were going to die in the next moment.

When he pulled away, she tried to her best to give him a watery smile. 

“Maybe they’ll still have deep dish pizza there,” she started. “I heard it was good.”

_Oh, June._  

He pulled her to him, where they both wept until the sun almost peeked out from behind the trees.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was always intrigued by his relationship with Beth, I hope I did some justice to what I imagine their dynamic is.
> 
> Sorry for such a delay -- life gets in the way sometimes, but I thoroughly enjoyed this season and am planning on continuing this fic for at least another chapter or two.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A further exploration of Nick's journey to being the emotionally guarded guy we all know and love/are endlessly frustrated by.

 

It took him a long time to not live in a daze after DC.

Fred and Serena had prayed over him as soon as he returned, as if he’d been responsible for saving people rather than a massacre. He wanted to scream at them, he wanted to tell them what really happened, because he couldn’t bring himself to believe that they were proud of him for what he’d done. 

But he knew it deep down, that they were. 

Only a few weeks after it, when Nick had spent every one of his days lurking like a ghost in the Waterford house, pacing his apartment after nightmares that his own curdling screaming woke him up from, feeling himself disappear, Pryce summoned him into the new Gilead headquarters in Boston. 

Nick didn’t even register the drive between the new Waterford manor and the office. 

When he sat down in Pryce’s office, he felt the man look over him carefully. He reminded him of the minister that had spent his days trying to convert Nick into religion as a child. Disciplined, but constantly speaking like a disappointed father. And men like Pryce, like the minister, those who believed without question, had always struck Nick as naive. This revelation as a child was one of the first moments Nick remembered realizing that being an adult didn’t necessarily mean one had all the right answers.

“Are you okay, son?” Pryce started, a question that Nick hadn’t anticipated him asking. 

Nick could only manage to nod.

Pryce leaned back in his desk chair, which was new enough that it hardly creaked in reaction to the movement, and narrowed his eyes a bit. Not angry, just concentrating. Nick felt his pulse quicken a bit, since he preferred being looked over, not looked through. 

“I don’t remember you having suck dark circles under your eyes,” the Commander told him. 

They’d popped up almost immediately, it seemed. Each day, his eyes looked more sunken, making him feel more and more like the ghost of himself. 

Nick still couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He drummed his toes in his shoes, and tried to equate the experience to what being in the principal’s office must have been in school — Josh had been enough times for the two of them that Nick tried to channel his brother. 

“Have you been sleeping, Nick?” 

The specificity of the question, the way Pryce’s face changed when he asked it, the way his hands gripped for the edge of his desk when he asked as if to brace himself for the inevitable answer, made Nick almost feel as if he were falling backwards out of his own chair. 

He placed his hands on his knees, in an effort to ground himself, as his gaze automatically pulled to the floor. 

“No, sir,” he felt himself saying before he could contemplate the consequences of being honest. If he’d learned anything from Gilead, it was that you played your cards close to your chest, said what was expected and not the truth. 

Pryce drummed his fingers on the desk, bringing Nick’s gaze back up. Nick concentrated on keeping his jaw tight, not wanting to show any other emotion.

“I know it wasn’t something you expected you had to do,” Pryce started. 

Nick felt something bubble up in him, the anger of what he’d done, what he’d been too scared to refuse to do, what he hadn’t had the courage to die in order to stand against. 

“I was told I would be a _driver_ , sir. No mention of me ever carrying a gun, let alone serving in the military.” 

He expected Pryce to yell back at him, but he knew that wasn’t going to be something the man did. Pryce, the man who showed him humility and grace in a low moment, wasn’t that type and never would be. Maybe it’s why Nick had let his walls down here in his office. 

“They wanted to send you to New York City — there is a particularly strong rebel movement there.” Pryce paused, and looked at Nick with the most sympathy he’d been afforded since he last saw his mom. 

“I don’t want to send you.” 

Nick, though he felt relieved for a moment, knew it was a mistake. There was always a catch when it came to Gilead. 

“I think your talents are best used elsewhere,” Pryce began, the inevitable other shoe dropping. 

“As a driver?” Nick asked, wanting more than anything for his life to go back to just driving. 

Pryce stood up, which Nick took as never being a good sign. He watched the man walk over to the window in the room, with his back to him. 

“What I admire about you is your conscience,” Pryce told him, though he was still facing the window. “‘The conscience manifests itself in the feeling of obligation we experience, which precedes, attends and follows our actions.’” 

“Proverbs?” Nick asked. 

“E.T. Fitch, actually,” Pryce said, as he turned to Nick with a sly smile. He took a seat again at the desk, and looked Nick directly in the eye. “I have my doubts about some of our other Commanders, whether they have any sort of consciences.” He paused. “I want to assemble a team who makes sure of that. You’d be the perfect fit, son.” 

Nick watched Pryce carefully. Was this good news? 

“It’d be in addition to being a driver. Being a driver would be the side job, almost.” Pryce threaded his fingers together. “As a driver, you’re privy to a lot of conversations that are otherwise private. Conversations that don’t take you as a listener into account.” 

Nick nodded. He’d already noticed that unfortunate part of his job. 

“I’m calling them The Eyes. ‘The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.’” Pryce gave Nick a smile, one that felt almost comforting. 

“And, for the record,” the man said, “That one _is_ from Proverbs.”

 

* * *

 

On one of the rides in his Uncle Jim’s cruiser, Nick felt himself staring at the gun kept in his uncle’s holster. He’d never been in a position to see his uncle use it, but even when he’d been in the car for a routine traffic stop, he watched the way his uncle rested the palm of his right hand on it while it was tucked in the holster on his walk up to the car. How his hand stayed there until the window had unrolled, until he’d gotten a good look at the driver. 

His uncle must have noticing his fixation on the gun. 

“Nick?” He asked, when the car stopped back in front of the meager Blaine house to drop Nick off for the night, the wear and tear of Detroit aging the neighborhood rapidly with each passing year. 

Nick turned his face up to his Uncle, feeling his cheeks turn warm, scared that he’d been caught doing something bad. It wasn’t that he wanted to shoot the gun, or even touch it. He’d just been lost in thought about what it must have felt like to carry one. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, refraining from killing the car engine, idling it instead. 

In the fifth grade, Nick hadn’t quite discovered that being quiet was the best way to stay out of trouble, or to at least avoid awkward conversations. 

“Have you ever used your gun before?” he asked, feeling butterflies take up residence in his stomach. He almost regretted asking the question, scared for what his Uncle’s answer would be. 

He watched Jim swallow in a pronounced way as a means of buying an extra moment of time to think about his answer. 

“It’s a tool. People use tools in their jobs, right?” 

Nick nodded, though he knew his eyes were wide. His dad operated machinery at the auto plant. His dad used wrenches at work. 

“Police officers go through a lot of training on how to use their tools,” Jim said. “We have other tools we use too.” He pointed to a can on his holster. “That’s pepper spray. If we can, we use that first. It doesn’t hurt anyone for too long. It stops them from hurting other people long enough that we can help.” 

Nick nodded, thinking of the television shows he’d seen, some of the brutality he’d seen portrayed. It wasn’t that he felt scared of his uncle, but rather the potential his uncle had to perhaps one day be like one of the men on TV. 

“Have you,” Nick started, though he was unable to finish the question, his mouth too dry to form the rest of his words. 

“Have I ever used my gun before?” Jim finished for him, his face softening the slightest bit from its usual stoicism. 

“Yeah,” Nick said, almost a whisper. 

He watched the way his uncle regarded him. Almost finished with the fifth grade, only a few months away from starting middle school, where kids in Detroit were known for getting involved in gangs, into drugs, into drinking, because there was so little else for them to do. Joshua’s clues were already starting to set in that he was going to have a rough road ahead for him. Nick was innocent, but not entirely. 

“Yes,” Jim told him, the earnestness in his uncle’s response making Nick automatically sit straighter, pressing his back into the leather seat. As if he needed to man up for the conversation. 

“It’s a last-resort tool,” Jim started. “It’s not the first thing I try to use, ever. My job is to serve and protect people.” 

Nick thought of the shows he’d watched. How dangerous the criminals could be. 

“What about the people who try to hurt you?” 

Jim’s eyes narrowed a bit at this question, and Nick watched him nod his head a bit before speaking again. 

“Well, that’s part of the job, you know. Bad people don’t want to be stopped. But someone has to do it.” 

Nick contemplated this for a moment. 

“Have you ever shot someone with it?” 

Jim looked at him in a way that Nick hadn’t seen before. 

“This stays between you and me, okay? What I say here stays here.” Jim paused for a moment, as if he was trying to figure out how to explain his position. “It’s not because what I’m telling you is something you shouldn’t know, but your mom and dad might not necessarily want you to know it. They might think you’re a bit young for it, but I don’t. I’ve seen a lot, you know.” 

Nick nodded. 

“I have shot at someone with it,” Jim said. “I have a few times. It’s scary to do it.” 

Nick watched his uncle carefully, though he felt a sense of relief with Jim’s honesty, his brain had already gone to the worst case scenario. 

“Have you killed someone?” Nick asked, though his voice shook in a way that normally would have made him feel embarrassed, but felt appropriate in the safety of his uncle’s car. 

“No,” Jim said, with a gravity that allowed Nick to know he was telling the truth. 

“I’ve used the gun to make sure no one else got hurt. There are ways you can aim a bullet so they don’t kill someone.” Jim paused. “Killing people isn’t my job. My job is to protect people. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s death.” 

Uncle Jim patted his shoulder, and Nick went inside for the night, comforted to know his Uncle was one of the good ones. 

It was a memory that came to Nick often, when he stared at himself in the mirror, wondering how deep his eyes could sink into his head before they pushed on his brain.

 

* * *

 

Rita joined the Waterford household as soon as they moved into the manor. Nick was still in his sleepwalk post-DC the first time he walked through the kitchen. He had kept his head down, walking from the back door to the hallway doorframe on his way to Fred’s study to report for the day, the rest of the house bustling with boxes and extra guardians tasked with unpacking. 

He only looked up from the wood flooring, where he’d been concentrating on the lines, when Rita cleared her throat. 

They made brief eye contact, before Nick finally found the ability to nod at her. She was in the midst of chopping something. He didn’t bother to take note of what it was — it wasn’t like he had much of an appetite lately. 

“Under his eye,” he told her, before moving a bit quicker to Fred’s office. 

They’d had a few moments of stolen glances, and Nick could have sworn he caught an eye roll from Rita on numerous occasions in the course of the next few weeks, as the household navigated the uncharted waters of a conscious, cultivated Gilead existence. 

Sometime after Offred joined the house — an impossibly silent, skittish girl with wisps of brunette hair that popped out when she bowed her head, a nearly constant action for her — he found Rita one night in the kitchen during one of his many late-night kitchen raids. He’d never run into anyone else so late at night, when the house was silent and almost tolerable. 

Rita jumped when he entered, having had her back to him, staring out of the kitchen window. 

“Under his eye,” he told her, not pausing on his way to the fridge. 

He felt her watch him for a moment as he looked at the offerings before selecting a plum from the drawer. 

“So you’re where all my ingredients have been going,” she said, and he turned to find her smirking in the way that he’d seen her do. 

“I like midnight snacks sometimes,” Nick told her, as he bit into the fruit.

She watched him almost wistfully, and Nick felt something pull in his chest at the way he was being regarded. 

“My son did too,” she told him, her voice giving the first true hint of emotion he’d heard in a while. 

He felt his stomach drop with the past tense. It wasn’t used often in Gilead — everyone worked so hard to stay in the moment, to only talk about their new lives that it was jarring to hear. Somehow, in the last few weeks, he’d forgotten anyone but himself had existed before any of this. 

She was watching him in a way that he felt naturally compelled to speak. 

“So did my brother,” Nick offered up, gripping for the kitchen counter with his free hand. It was the first he’d spoken of Josh since the funeral. 

He watched Rita nod. 

“At least they didn’t have to be here for this,” she said, putting words to the feeling that was the only one that let him finally fall sleep at night. 

“Yeah,” he managed, almost unable to swallow the bite he’d been chewing. He felt his gaze go to the floor. They stood there for a moment, Nick wholly unable to move, afraid that it’d end the first moment of connection he’d felt since everything started too soon. 

“You haven’t been eating much though, have you?” Rita finally asked, forcing Nick to bring his gaze back up to her. Her eyes narrowed just like his mother’s would when she was concerned and asking questions. 

“I’m —,” he started, intending to tell her he was fine, but he couldn’t lie to Rita for some odd reason. He felt his face falter. 

He watched Rita breathe deeply, her face twisting into a bit of a scowl before it softened, as if she were dissatisfied with her own silence. 

“I heard the Commander talking the other day,” she started, tapping her fingers on the countertop for a moment, looking towards the doorway as if to make sure no one else was also suffering from late-night insomnia. “About your military accolades.” 

Nick felt his cheeks get hot, and he bowed his head again. 

“My son was killed in action,” Rita started, and Nick could feel his eyes get hot and an instant nausea threaten to make him spill his guts on the floor right there. 

 _Fuck, one of us killed him._  

He set his partially eaten fruit on the counter, clearing his throat to both attempt to speak, but also attempt to prolong his ability to control his stomach for the time being. 

“In Afghanistan,” Rita told him, before he could offer his worst attempt at an apology. 

He felt as if he were floating from the relief that flooded him with the revelation. 

“A while back,” Rita added, her voice thick with emotion. “He joined the Army because we didn’t have the money to send him to college. My husband and I were still paying off our own student loans,” she told him, her voice gaining its strength back as she spoke. 

“You remind me of when he came back from his first deployment,” she admitted. 

He could feel his face morph into confusion. 

“He wasn’t proud of what he did there, either,” Rita said, her eyes glistening in the mostly moonlit kitchen. “He didn’t have a choice, though. He wasn’t the one giving orders.”

Nick could felt his chin threaten to tremble. 

Rita tilted her head to look at him, reminding him of his mother yet again. 

“I wish you’d eat a little more. I’m not a terrible cook,” she said, her playful but deceptively small smile coming back out. 

She walked past him, pausing as their shoulders lined up. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” she told him. 

He listened until the floorboards stopped creaking, when she got to her room. 

He stayed in the kitchen, looking out the window as Rita had been doing when he found her, until the moonlight faded into the first hint of morning.

 

* * *

 

He stormed into the kitchen at nearly one in the morning, where she was finishing her nightly cleaning. 

“Where is she?” He demanded. 

Beth nearly whipped around, her eyes wide and angry, revealing someone entirely unfamiliar to Nick. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She asked, practically teleporting across the kitchen with the speed she met him, and dragged him by the elbow to her room. 

Once the door had been shut, she whirled around to him, as he dragged a hand down his face, trying to catch the breath he hadn’t been aware he’d lost. 

“Are you trying to get us both killed?” She spat out in a low tone. 

He felt anger bubble up in his stomach. 

“I’m a part of the search party.” 

Beth’s eyes rolled so hard, it looked as if the nerves were going to be permanently loosened. 

“Yeah, the search party that has already been here more than a few times, combing through every inch of the girls’ rooms,” she whispered back, harshly. “Great cover.” 

“Where is she, Beth?” He nearly begged.

“That’s not how this works,” she told him, folding her arms tightly across her chest. “You _know_ full well that’s not how this works.” 

“Bullshit,” he felt himself saying as his brows knitted together. “We always have some sort of idea on things.” 

“No,” she countered back, surprisingly even. “No, _we_ don’t. I’m the fucking coordinator of all of this, and I rarely know more than I need to.” 

He felt his breaths getting shorter. 

“So you have no idea where she is?” He countered, feeling his face get hot. 

“Fuck, Nick,” she whispered back, putting her hands on either side of her head in what seemed to be disbelief. “We talked about this. I told you we weren’t going to have answers right away. You agreed to that.” 

“So while we wait a couple weeks for her to get on a plane or whatever we end up working out, and get news that she did, you didn’t bother to figure out where she was going to be?” 

Beth choked out an exasperated but nearly silent laugh. 

“You of all people know how guarded everyone is on this stuff,” she told him. “And now that there’s a fuckin’ _person_ involved? A pregnant handmaid of all fuckin’ people? Now that we’re not just smuggling gin and birth control?” She shook her head. “The stakes are so goddamned high that everyone is tight-lipped like their lives depend on it. Because they fuckin’ do.” 

Nick felt his blood pressure nearly cause his veins to burst under his skin. 

“How do you not know where that truck took her, Beth?” 

Beth folded her arms again, and narrowed her eyes. 

“Because the guy who drove her is probably on a fuckin’ wall.” She paused. “He should have already reported back through the network.” 

Nick felt suddenly sick, and he watched Beth’s face soften. 

“She wouldn’t be on the wall. She’s pregnant,” she reasoned with him, although it didn’t bring him any sort of comfort. 

“But,” he felt himself somehow able to say. “How do we know she’s not abandoned somewhere?” 

He watched Beth inhale deeply. 

“I don’t think she is,” she started. “I would know if something had really gone wrong in transport. The next interception point would have been asking questions.” 

“You don’t think she is? What the fuck, Beth?” He had started to pace in her bedroom, pausing for a moment to try to quell the way his stomach was turning. “I feel sick,” he told her, putting a hand near his mouth as he took the deepest breath he could muster. 

“Jesus Christ, Nick,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder, which made him turn to her. “Get your shit together.” 

He took a couple deep breaths, until the feeling subsided, Beth’s hand staying put on his shoulder as he did. 

“This is exactly why I didn’t want to do this,” she started, and he could feel himself want to cry. “You and I can’t be emotionally involved like this in the operation. We have to keep our fuckin’ heads on.” 

“We can’t take it back now,” he finally said, with a shaking voice. 

“No,” Beth said, with the shake of her head. “We can’t.” Her hand dropped from his shoulder. 

“You really don’t know?” 

Beth shook her head again, and Nick’s stomach dropped as her own face fell.

“She’s in the city. She’s not here, though,” she offered. “That’s all I know right now.” 

“Who knows?” Nick asked. 

He watched Beth bite her lip. 

“You know as well as I do that you can’t just seek that information out,” she told him. “You’re going to get someone killed.” 

“Beth,” he started, but she cut him off.

“You’re going to get both of you killed,” she told him, with a gravity that shook him out of his stupor for a second. “If they find her, there’s no guarantee she won’t be shipped off to the colonies as soon as that baby is born.” 

Nick’s brain paused its attempt to go through every single contact he could think of, but only momentarily. 

“You need to get out of here,” she told him, with an authoritative tone that nearly scared him. “You’re going to end up on the wall before all of this is said and done.” 

He looked down and nodded. 

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” she assured him. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he muttered, his breath raggedy. 

“Get your shit together,” she told him. “And for the love of God, do not come here again without Fred in tow.” She paused, and her eyes narrowed in their familiar way. 

“And you know how little I want to say that,” she said to him with the slightest hint of a smile. 

It was only a few days before Fred wanted to get his fix again, before Beth told him she was at the Globe. They were arguably the longest few days of his life.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize as I'm writing this that the little scenes are getting longer -- I hope that isn't too much of a deterrent for anyone!
> 
> Also, I've been listening to a song as I write this practically on repeat -- "Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)" as covered by Sarah Polley. It's haunting. It's wonderful. There's a particular line -- "courage couldn't come at a worse time" that I am so intrigued by, it might actually be what I'm trying to figure out here as I delve into Nick's character.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where the narrative finally starts to move forward a little! In the next chapter, we'll start exploring Nick's story after where the writers left off.

He’d been going to meetings for the Eyes for a while, which wasn’t terrible considering the fact that Pryce never had Nick be one to serve justice to anyone. He’d been collecting notes on Commander Guthrie, which had been deceptively simple with the way he and Fred talked about their handmaids in the car. That, and Guthrie had brought his along to Jezebel’s a few times back before Offred got pregnant. He’d once joked about it being a double date as they all walked through the back hallway.

He’d had enough evidence shortly after Offred’s suicide to bring it to Pryce’s attention. Guthrie had been a walking target for a while, but zeroing in on him enough to serve a sentence took less time than Nick had assumed it would.

There was something about Offred’s death that made him angry in a way that felt different than DC. Maybe because this time, he didn’t have to be angry with himself. His hands were as clean as they could be when it came to her death. They’d received so many visitors who consoled the whole household, though they were only there to mourn the baby who’d also been lost. The girl, the vessel, seemed to not matter to anyone but Nick and Rita, who had grown sunken and quiet since they found her.

He knew that Pryce would want him to turn his attention to Fred, since the gravity of a handmaid killing herself while pregnant was greater than any other sort of infraction. Glued to the bottom of one of his drawers was a manilla folder with information on Fred, but as Pryce offered his condolences for the loss, Nick decided not to mention this.

He wanted to wait until he had enough to absolutely destroy the man, so that when Nick got to watch him be yanked out of the van, that he’d know there was no way he was going to be leaving the Eyes’ headquarters alive.

Maybe he’d even volunteer to inflict Fred’s justice.

 

* * *

 

The first night he brought home a girl and it counted, he was twenty-one. Her name, ironically, was Joy. His mother made a big Italian dinner from scratch to help him impress her, and to take away from the fact that Josh wasn’t going to show up, despite Nick asking him to be there.

It was probably for the best, anyway, that he didn’t come. By that point, Josh’s sobriety came in fleeting moments, otherwise surrounded in screaming and bingeing and passing out.

It didn’t change the fact that Nick had wanted Josh to meet her, though.

Nick’s parents were obviously excited, but he felt color rise to his cheeks when he came down the stairs to find his dad in his good shirt, his mother setting out the china that she’d gotten when her own mother had died. 

“Mom,” he said, brushing a wrinkle out of his t-shirt he’d thrown on — some band he’d listened to back then — “this isn’t — you don’t need to do all of this.”

He watched the way his mother waved him off while washing the china clean since it was rare it ever got pulled out of the hutch that always managed to have a thin layer of dust covering everything inside of it.

“Oh nonsense, Nicholas,” she said. “It’s an occasion.”

“What is?” his father asked, coming into the kitchen to open the fridge and grab himself a beer — a habit that would spiral out of control once he lost his job at the auto plant for good the next year.

“Joy coming here, to have dinner with us,” Nick chimed in. “And mom, I told her it was no big thing. I told her to wear jeans. She’s gonna be uncomfortable if you’re pulling out the good china.”

“I doubt she’s gonna be uncomfortable here of all places.” Nick’s dad gestured around the small, aging kitchen with a coy smile. “The china doesn’t make this place a palace.” He popped the top off of his beer and ambled back to the living room, where some sort of sports game commentary droned through the television’s tinny speakers.

Nick watched his mother open the fridge and to his surprise he saw cannolis, their tell-tale chocolate chips screaming temptation out to him like they used to when he was a little kid. He felt his mouth immediately water.

“Mom, cannolis?”

“I want her to feel welcome,” she started, turning away from the fridge to reveal her apron covered in puffs of flour. “That we’re excited she’s here.” He watched her falter for a moment. “I want you to know that _we’re_ excited she’s coming, too.”

But not Josh. The ever-present-and-yet-always-gone elephant in the room.

Something in Nick’s brain suddenly clicked and the connection he couldn’t quite put a finger on was made. He smiled the same coy smile that his father had worn just a few moments prior. He watched his mother cock her head a bit and raise a confused eyebrow.

“Do you remember the last time you made cannolis?”

She immediately rolled her eyes and waved him off.

“No correlation,” she said with the tiniest of smiles — bittersweet, maybe relieved.

Nick felt something in his chest tug.

“Mom?” he asked, as she went back to work. He watched her pause and turn to him.

“Thank you,” he mustered.

She smiled at him, the creases near her eyes more defined than in years’ past.

“Of course, sweetheart,” she told him as the doorbell rang.

He looked to her once more before she nodded, his sign to go let Joy into their home.

 

* * *

 

It didn’t take long after the car ride in which Waterford asked him for his name for Nick to join the household. Pryce had phrased it like it was an honor, but after overhearing the brief conversation, Nick wasn’t too certain.

After settling in his new apartment, a decent studio above the garage that Nick had been relatively surprised by — he hadn’t expected to have so much privacy considering he was low on the totem pole — Fred had asked him to join him in the study. Nick unpacked his suitcase of government-issued clothing, and another bag with his favorite books, a couple records, and the picture of him and Josh at the lake on the final vacation they had as a family.

Nick’s first encounter with Serena Joy was a quick greeting on his way to Fred’s office in the manor. She struck him entirely differently than he’d expected her to be. She held herself with a poise and confidence, unlike the brief encounters he'd had with any of the other wives. Mrs. Pryce was particularly quiet -- a nice smile, but with a head that was always bent down, never the first to speak. Nick wasn't sure that anything else was allowed for the wives.

So when Serena Joy was the first to speak, he was taken aback. He carefully made eye contact with her as she passed by, her piercing blue eyes deeply unsettling despite her undeniable beauty.

He nodded at her, and she disappeared in her peacock blue uniform before he could say anything in response.

Fred's office door was open, but Nick paused at the doorway to wait for permission. Fred looked up from his paperwork, and extended his hand.

"Close the door, won't you, son?"

Nick thought briefly of his own father, but only for a moment. He couldn't recall a single moment in which his dad had ever called him son. Formality had never been a focus in their household, which made Fred's demeanor off-putting.

Nick shut the door carefully before stepping forward to Fred's desk. Instinctively, he took a seat in one of the chairs positioned by the desk.

"How are you settling in?" Fred asked, his voice softening. If Nick hasn't known any better, he would have assumed Fred was being genuine.

"I'm okay, sir," Nick told him, folding his hands.

"I assumed you would have been the driver for Commander Pryce," Fred started. "I was pleasantly surprised to find out that you were still awaiting assignment."

Nick still hadn't quite figured out why Matthew, a guy maybe a year younger, had been chosen by Commander Pryce. He wasn't sure if it was a personal burn, if Pryce could tell he regretted DC. Nick only nodded in response, unsure of what Fred was trying to get out of him from the conversation -- whatever it was, Nick wasn't willing to give it to him.

"I hope you understand that there will be things you'll be privy to that others will not in this position.” Fred closed one of the files on his desk. ”There’s a certain amount of trust we put in the drivers of high-ranking officials."

Had he not been in Gilead, Nick would have rolled his eyes. Trust had been drilled into them during their training so much that the world alone annoyed him.

"Yes sir," Nick said, figuring being a man of few words would be the best approach when it came to Fred.

"Our household is one that values discretion," Fred said, pressing his fingers together and placing them in front of his mouth and nose as if in deep thought. Nick watched him warily. If he'd learned anything in the span of time he'd been an interim driver while the commanders selected postings, it was that no part of any conversation left the room in which it was held.

"Of course sir."

Fred's eyes narrowed in a way that made Nick uncomfortable.

"Mrs. Waterford is," he paused, smiling in a sinister way, ”very headstrong. She has opinions of how things should go. This is an adjustment for all of us.”

Fred folded his hands on his desk. 

"I want to be sure that you know you answer to me."

 

* * *

 

The following morning, just before the day started to break and he’d said his final rushed goodbye to June, Nick crept down the stairs quietly, only to hear Beth’s tell-tale hum as she started making her breads before the house was awake. He never understood how Beth functioned with so little sleep, but then again, his own survivor’s guilt often kept him from getting any rest at night. 

He felt himself walking towards the kitchen before he knew what he was doing.

“You’re lucky the Commander likes his beauty sleep,” Beth said with a smirk as he stood at the end of the counter top.

Nick nodded, almost in autopilot. He’d be on a plane to Chicago in a few hours. 

“I like her, for the record,” Beth told him. “She’s brave.” 

Nick drummed on the counter.

“Yeah,” he said, his mouth sticking together as he tried to hold in the urge to cry like he had been doing all night. 

“We might have to tone it down a little bit before she’s heading the resistance, but she’ll be good,” Beth told him, stopping her kneading for a moment.

He made eye contact with her, unsure of what she meant, but realizing that the details weren’t something he needed to know anymore. 

“Things are changing,” Beth said. “Cora’s gone.” 

Nick watched her face. Normally, this would be bad news, but Beth seemed neutral. 

Truth be told, the idea of Mayday changing, the idea of June being a part of it, the idea of him being removed, scared the hell out of him. He’d always liked being in the loop, being one of the people who pulled the strings. 

Nick felt his gaze drop again. 

“I didn’t understand why you’d want to risk everything for her when we were doing it. I always figured she was just the handmaid — the handmaid you could save from everything including herself.” Beth admitted, going back to the kneading. “But she doesn’t need that. She’s good for you.” 

Nick felt himself smile at Beth’s delivery, though his eyes were watering. He glanced up at the window, the sunlight starting to make itself present. He needed to go. 

“My mom would have liked her,” he told Beth, his voice cracking. 

He looked up at her, the way her chin wrinkled as she held back emotion. 

“I’ve already got my ear to the ground for Chicago.” She paused. “We’re still gonna burn this motherfucker to the ground okay?” 

Nick wrapped his arms around her, pressing his lips to Beth’s hair. 

“No,” he said. “You and _June_ are gonna burn it down.”

 

* * *

 

Cannolis had been served the night Josh and his then-fiancée, Ashley, announced they were pregnant a year before Joy’s dinner at the Blaine household. 

Nick had immediately started to choke on his bite when Josh casually announced the news like he was talking about something inconsequential that happened at work.

He heard a fork clatter as he coughed hard enough to dislodge the bite, but not hard enough to send it out onto his plate. He looked up, as he awkwardly chewed the half-eaten dessert in an effort to maintain some sort of decorum, to see his father frozen in place and his mother’s skin paling as her empty hand still held the shape of the utensil she’d dropped.

“What?” She asked.

“Ash is pregnant,” Josh said, in the same casual tone that was making things hard to process.

Nick suddenly couldn’t watch his brother anymore and turned to look at Ashley, who had thinning eyebrows and a sunken look to her face that Joshua would eventually share. She seemed equally obvious to the implications of a baby at this stage in their life — particularly with their lifestyles.

Nick’s mom spoke first after an eternally long silence.

“Are you clean?” She was looking at Ashley, who, judging by the way her skin looked, was not.

“Yeah,” the girl said passively, moving around the food on her plate.

Nick wanted to keep eating the dessert, since it was his mom’s speciality, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop staring at them. 

“You can’t be doing what you all have been doing,” his mom said, finally looking at Joshua again. Josh laughed his same passive, dismissive laugh.

“Seriously,” his mother said, taking on a tone that was atypical. Nick felt himself unconsciously straighten up in his chair at the change. 

“You’ll get arrested if you lose that baby to drugs,” she said, turning to Ashley again, who was looking increasingly uncomfortable. “With the new laws, you know.” 

Ashley looked to Joshua in a panicked way, almost as if for help. 

“Mom,” Josh said, with an air of naive impatience. “I thought you all would be happy.” 

Their father was rising from the table indiscreetly. 

“Dad,” Josh started, but he was immediately cut off by their father. 

“Why the fuck would we be happy?” Nick looked down, unable to make eye contact with the amount of emotion he heard from his dad, masked by anger. 

“Why would we be excited? You’re either going to lose that baby before it’s born, or it’s going to come out missing half of its brain or all of its limbs.”

“Robert,” came from their mother, but it was futile. 

“You want us to be happy?” Nick’s dad gestured towards Ashley. “This girl is not clean. Maybe right in this moment, which is more than I can say for you currently, but she’s going to need a fix sometime soon. We’ve all seen that more than enough times at this point.” 

“Are you going to some sort of rehab? NA? Something?” Nick looked up at Ashley as his mother spoke to her. Her face had changed. 

“Yes,” she said, breaking eye contact, going back to her cannoli. 

Ashley’s overdose came only a few weeks later and Nick would find out later that Josh had been the one who waited to call 9-1-1, with how strung out he’d been, worried he’d get in trouble. 

At the time, he didn’t understand how his brother could put himself before her, how he could let her die. But now, he couldn’t really blame him at all. 

 

* * *

 

“Hey,” Nick said, coming into the kitchen, wishing he could have a shot to take the edge off of the unavoidable and uncomfortable conversation he’d have with Fred later about driving to Jezebel’s, but knowing that he had to settle for something else. Rita had her back turned to him, cleaning up after lunch. Serena Joy was in the garden for a few hours, as always, and Fred was cooped up in his office on calls and doing paperwork, which left Nick to tend to the maintenance of the place, to wash the car, to take care of the landscaping. He preferred the daytime, the break away from Fred. 

As usual, in between tasks, Nick picked up a towel and began drying the wet dishes as Rita scrubbed her cast iron pan with salt. 

“Thanks,” Rita told him, her voice hard to interpret as it always was these days. Pained? Hopeful? Nick never knew. 

“Do you have any leftovers of that cake from last night?” Nick asked as he carefully polished the silverware. 

“In the fridge,” Rita said. 

“It reminded me of something my mom used to make,” Nick told her, and he looked up to make eye contact with Rita as her eyes shined a little. 

And then, there was a noise. A shift in the house. A loud creak. Nick and Rita both looked up towards the ceiling. 

Rita’s face had fallen by the time she spoke. 

“I wonder if she’s sick again,” she murmured, turning off the sink after she had scrubbed the pan clean. Offred had been violently ill for months since the announcement of her pregnancy, enough that even Aunt Lydia had finally conceded to giving the girl an IV to replenish fluids a few weeks prior when things were worse. Nick admittedly hadn’t seen much of Offred as of late, but the tell-tale hurried footsteps between her and the closest bathroom had become part of the usual background noise. He’d tuned it out easily, perhaps so he didn’t have to think about how much it reminded him of Josh during his binges. 

Rita joined him with a cloth to wipe down the pan she’d washed. There wasn’t much they could do for Offred at this point, particularly with how much Serena Joy insisted that the girl was fine. 

“You would think they’d have put her in a hospital by now,” Rita mused after a few minutes of drying. 

“Yeah, you’d think,” Nick said, and he looked out of the corner of his eyes to see Rita wearing the same small smirk he was. 

After another few minutes of silence, Nick noticed Rita looking up at the ceiling again. They typically would have already heard the loud rush of water through the old pipe system in the house, signaling that Offred’s bout of illness was over. But it’d been silent for quite a while at that point. 

“I think I’ll go check on her,” Rita said, setting down her cloth on the pan while still looking up towards the ceiling. 

Nick nodded at Rita as she left the kitchen, focusing on the polishing of the silverware. He’d gotten good since Rita had shown him how. 

And then, he heard frantic screaming. He had to assume it was Rita. 

He dropped the silverware in the sink, his brain hardly able to process what he might find as he ran up the stairs. 

 _Maybe Offred had passed out in her bathroom?_  

But Rita was standing in the doorway when he got there, shaking, sobbing, still screaming. 

His feet felt like lead for the final few steps. When he saw her hanging, all the blood drained out of her face, he had to stop moving for a moment, as he swayed slightly on his feet, so he could will the darkness creeping at the corners of his vision away. 

He could feel his adrenaline skyrocketing in a way that it hadn’t since DC once he was able to move again. She was still a bit warm to the touch, but with the unsteadiness of her neck when he cut her down, he knew it was too late before he even tried to feel for her nonexistent pulse. 

He guided Rita out of the room, grasping her around the shoulders as her knees failed to hold up under the weight of guilt and grief that he felt in his own limbs. 

He watched Fred stoically staring at the ambulance, perhaps with a hint of disbelief. Nick could feel his own vision blur as he thought of his mother finding Joshua, his parents waiting for the ambulance to take him away. 

He thought of watching the girl at Jezebel’s, the way her face contorted every time Fred reached for her, the way she always kept her gaze at the ground. 

“What did you think was going to happen?” Serena Joy’s voice pulled Nick from his thoughts, and he stared at Fred as the ambulance pulled away, the final evidence of her existence disappearing down the street. 

He didn’t know her name. 

 

* * *

 

When Nick got to Hansen’s office, ready to report for his flight to Chicago, Hansen was in front of multiple opened folders, papers fanned out across his desk. Nick had been expecting there to be a group.  

Instead, it seemed, the Commander was seeing everyone individually. 

“Have a seat,” Hansen told him. 

Nick did so, feeling his nerves betray him. He’d planned on going in stoic, but he was suddenly feeling unsure of himself. 

“There’s been a delay,” Hansen said as soon as Nick had gotten slightly comfortable in the chair. “The forces are taking a little longer to bring Chicago into our possession.” Hansen took a corner of one of the folders between his fingers and ran his thumb over it slowly. “We’ll have it soon enough, but the resistance is a bit more head-strong than we thought.” 

Nick hadn’t given too much thought of what his role was going to be in the resistance in Chicago. He’d figured he’d wait for word from Beth and then do what he could from there. Follow her lead as always. 

But now? Maybe he could start the next chapter of Mayday. 

“We’re sending you to DC for the time being,” Hansen said. 

Nick could feel the color immediately drain out of his face. 

“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with how much it’s changed,” Hansen said, his smile almost dastardly for a moment, though Nick knew deep down that the man in front of him wasn’t picturing the carnage that came to Nick in the silence of night. 

“Commander Winslow needs some help with planning. He asked which of the Commanders we were sending to Chicago would be the most helpful.” 

Hansen paused, giving Nick a knowing smile, that would have made him shudder had he not been so focused on staying unreadable. 

“You were the first one that came to mind.” 

Nick made sure to take one of the sedatives he and Beth had been smuggling before getting on the plane, with the hopes that he’d pass out and not have to relive the flight he’d taken a few years back. Sure enough, he’d stayed asleep from when he first closed his eyes as the plane started its descent until it bounced on the runway at what used to be Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC — the new Jacob National Airport of Gilead. 

Once he stepped out of the plane, he felt suffocated by the air. The humidity of the Mid-Atlantic was something he’d never been accustomed to, and made him feel like he’d traveled directly back in time to that fateful day. 

Winslow was waiting at the airport for him, standing on the tarmac with his broad shoulders and sense of authority. Nick had to blink a couple times as he took his steps down the stairs in hopes that his eyes were tricking him. 

Standing next to Winslow was none other than Fred Waterford, wearing the same awful half-smile he’d always worn. 

 _Fuck._  

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope to post as frequently as possible, but my schedule is about to get much more hectic -- my advanced apologies if it takes a while for the next update!
> 
> Also, clearly with the way I'm ending the chapter, this is a little divergent than what the writers set up to be Nick's initial meeting with Fred in DC, but I can't really make sense of the way the writers did things so I'm forgoing that small detail!


End file.
